Spring Break 2009!

An Old Life Magazine Photo of IstanbulFor this open post, I wanted to discuss my Spring Break plans. As anyone who followed my blog last semester or at different parts during this semester found out, I have a huge interest in what I deem to be deviant social identities. That is, identities constructed racially, sexually, religiously, ethnically, or otherwise, that deviate from the mainstream or privileged identities that, for however few people (if any) actually possess these identities, they are still upheld as the best.

I came to Berlin to begin studying Turkish racial formation, as Germany is known for the large number of Turks that have immigrated here to forge new, Western lives and develop more opportunities for their families. Rather unsurprisingly, there was quite a backlash to be dealt with. The migration and transport has been going on for, I believe, almost 40 years, and some Turks are starting to return back to their homeland out of a longing for cultural-belonging that they simply have not been able to achieve here for a number of different reasons. This, of course, is not to say that Germans in general have been unwelcoming, but there remains an unceasing production of “otherness” that Turks are constantly forced to deal with. This othering, as it were, keeps Turks occupying lower positions in society and having to deal with all types of unwanted work. Their children, born on German soil, are still not considered to be citizens. I’m not sure what the process of gaining citizenship in Germany is, but it seemed bizarre to me that these children are essentially without a home nation, and comes as no surprise that upon failing to get into Gymnasium (the highest level of German high school one can get into), they decide to move back to Turkey, either alone or with the support of family, and regain some of their cultural roots. Maybe there, despite being raised in another country, these people will lose their sense of otherness and disadvantage that seems to pervade the Western culture when it comes to dealing with constructed, non-Western individuals.

So, then, for my Spring Break plans I am excited to announce that I will be going to Istanbul! A city I know nothing about as of right now, but I am hoping to overturn that in the coming couple of weeks before departing. In all fairness, I wouldn’t have devised this plan to go to Istanbul on my own, but since others will be joining (and have done the majority of the planning) I decided it would be a really great way to enhance my capabilities of writing on the topic of identity formation and counter-formation in Berlin. I don’t know how or if I’ll be able to find Turks who returned from Germany in order to discuss their experiences of the two places, but at least I will be able to expose myself to Turkish culture, further my ways of viewing the gender/sexuality divides that have gone into seeing the Turkish culture in Berlin, and see if it’ll be at all possible for me to do all of this without enacting an exploitative Western gaze, which is definitely always an issue and always something that we have to fight very hard to overcome.

In the mean time, does anyone have any leads on books that discuss Turkish racial formation or return-to-Turkey-from-Germany migrations? Furthermore, and this is going definitely out on a limb, but does anyone have any advice for Summer internships that would involve me doing this type of counter-xenophobic activism or internship opportunities in general?